Juliana
By the time six o’clock on Monday rolls around no longer feels like going on a moped ride with a stranger. What had
she been thinking? She wasn’t even drunk when she invited Nicola! She never gets drunk at her own parties. She never has more
than two drinks, period. Drunk equals loss of control and loss of control is what causes bad things to happen. She’s seen
enough of that in her life.
Obviously she knows what she was thinking. She knows exactly why she wants to get to know Nicola. But she’s tired. She had
a long day of meetings—an investment bank interview, prep for the upcoming board meeting, a check-in with the CFO.
peeks out the window in her upstairs office and sees her neighbor making her way across the grass between their house;
she wills herself into a better mood. She can will herself into anything. She’s gone to school hungry; she’s gone to bed scared;
she’s stood before a roomful of investors and conquered her terror only by telling herself that not a single person in the
room has overcome what she’s overcome to be there. Just keep moving, she’d told herself in every one of these situations.
Just. Keep. Moving. A moped ride is nothing.
Anyway, why shouldn’t she be in a good mood? The day had been cloudy, but an afternoon rain shower took the clouds and some of the humidity with it when it departed, and now the air is clear, the water in Great Salt Pond sparkling. She lives here . She owns this house . Just keep moving.
greets Nicola and walks her around to where the two mopeds wait in all their gleaming black sleekness. She’s barely
used one of them; the other one, she’s never used at all.
“Wow!” says Nicola. “These look a little fancier than what they rent down by the ferry. These look like the Cadillacs of the
moped world!”
“Actually, they’re BMWs.” Immediately after the words leave her mouth chastises herself. Was that an obnoxious thing
to say? She can never get this right, the line between being generous and arrogant. With the board? Sure. With potential investment
bankers, journalists? No problem. She knows who she is and what she wants and how to get there. But put her with someone close
to her own age and her mind goes off the rails, she flounders.
Nicola laughs. “Okay, then,” she says merrily. “BMW, Cadillac—honestly, it’s all the same to me!”
suggests they do a partial loop of the island, following West Side to Cooneymous to Lakeside, then take Mohegan Trail
to Spring Street into town. They’ll end up at Ballard’s, where will treat them to a cocktail and dinner.
“Oh, gosh, you don’t need to treat,” says Nicola, and in her voice can hear a touch of Minnesota that makes her think
of... well, of David. Of course, David. “But I do need a little moped lesson. I’ve only driven one once, and it was a long
time ago.”
shows Nicola the accelerator, and how to brake and steer. She shows her how to balance with her feet on the ground,
and where to place her feet on the running boards. Once Nicola has all of this down—she practices on ’s driveway, and
she’s a quick study—off they go.
The island looks spectacular as they cruise around toward the west side. Sunset is still nearly two hours away, but the sky is getting ready, and Golden Hour is almost upon them. The sunsets on this side of the island, off Dorry’s Cove and Stevens Cove, are said to be phenomenal, and makes a mental note to see one sometime this summer. The rolling hills of Mohegan Trail as it eases into Spring Street give her that roller coaster euphoria (a trip to Canobie Lake Park during a YMCA summer camp for underprivileged children unleashes itself from her memory), and, as they coast into town, the thought floats through ’s mind, unobtrusive and wispy as a cloud, that she’s finally made it.
Ballard’s is massive, with a large indoor section and a multitude of blue-umbrellaed outdoor tables. Beyond the tables is
a long stretch of beach and two tiki bars. A breakwater juts into the ocean; on the sand, a group of young women photograph
each other. And why shouldn’t they? This is the literal definition of picture perfect. A ferry moves majestically past.
and Nicola order two Rum Runners.
Nicola gulps her Rum Runner, then says, “Sorry. Sorry! I need to slow down. Had a crazy day.” She tells that she works
at the Block Island Maritime Institute; she tells her that she left a career in law to become the Oldest Intern in the World.
She tells she has law school loans that would keep her up at night if she let herself think about them.
“We had a class of six-year-olds in from a day camp in Newport,” continues Nicola. “They looked cherubic from the outside,
but let me tell you, there was something very different going on inside. A girl named Avery tried to climb in the touch tank.”
“Oh, no!” says dutifully.
“A boy named Smith, who had a more recent iPhone than I have , wanted to take a selfie with a shark, which obviously wasn’t an option, but he wouldn’t stop talking about it.” She tells
she’s involved in planning the Dolphin Program, a weeklong residential program for groups from schools that traditionally
have low college attendance rates.
“Oh my god,” says . “There are dolphins here? This island keeps getting better and better!”
Nicola smiles. “I made the same mistake. No, the program is named after a woman with the last name Dolphin.”
“Ah! Got it.”
“Sorry. I was disappointed too, when I first heard about it.”
“There are also,” says , “zero mansions on Mansion Beach.”
“Also disappointing,” says Nicola. She sits back and adds, “I love it, though. Honestly, I’m complaining, but I’m not really
complaining. I’m learning so much already, about coastal exposure, and the effect of rising sea levels on marine life...
well, I don’t want to bore you.”
“I’m not bored,” says , though she is, in fact, a tiny bit bored. Nevertheless! She’s on a mission. “Let’s order,”
she suggests.
The menu is nearly as vast at the landscape. Lobster thirteen ways. Steamers, sautéed littlenecks. Sushi! Drinks served in
whole pineapples. They each order a lobster roll, and while they’re waiting they trade backgrounds: schools, previous jobs,
and so on. learns that Nicola recently broke up with a long-term boyfriend, and that she has a lot of sisters.
gives her short version of her education and the beginning of her company. Nicola says should come snorkeling with
her. There’s a great spot at Surf Beach, she tells her.
’s heart skips. She hates when this topic comes up, but it’s best to get it out of the way and keep it there. She shakes
her head. “Can’t. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”
Nicola blinks. “Why not?”
Deep breath. Push down the shame, . The shame isn’t yours anymore. “I’m scared of the water.”
Brow furrowed, Nicola asks, “In what way?”
“In the scary way. I can’t swim.”
Nicola takes several seconds to absorb this and then she says, “Like, at all?”
“At all.” clears her throat. “I never took swimming lessons as a kid.”
Nicola’s eyes grow wide. can see what she’s thinking: everyone takes swimming lessons as a kid. “You live on the water.
Isn’t that—dangerous?”
“Not if I don’t go in the water.”
“But what if you fall in?”
“I won’t. I’m careful.”
“I could teach you,” says Nicola. “I used to teach swimming at the lake. We have a family cottage? On Pokegama? Back home,
in Minnesota.”
knows about the lake house; it was described to her only once but she memorized the description so well, and she has
thought about it so often, that she could probably draw the place: the screen porch, the dock, the galley kitchen, the picnic
table on a blanket of pine needles.
“I don’t think so,” says . “Thank you. I appreciate it. But I’ll be okay.”
Nicola nods, and watches her cast about for a way to change the subject. Here it comes: “Did you like Boston College?”
What a loaded question, thinks . What a loaded, loaded question. Not that she hasn’t been asked before. She’s perfected
the art of the “ Loved it!” before smoothly changing the subject. Their lobster rolls arrive, and for a minute both Nicola and are busy,
each taking a bite, reaching for napkins. Then, surprising herself, says, “College was hard for me. Not so much academically.
Academically, it got me exactly where I needed to be. I never would have started LookBook without the education I got there.
I mean more—socially.” Wow, this conversation is getting deeper than she’d expected. “I—my mom died when I was thirteen. I
never knew my dad.”
waits for the response that all people give when she reveals this part of her history, which she doesn’t do very often. The response is typically a widening of the eyes, a tilt of the head, a soft intake of breath, followed by one of three statements: I’m so sorry to hear that . Or I had no idea . Or I can’t even imagine what that must have been like . It’s an a la carte menu; you can have any combination. Nicola chooses the intake of breath with I’m so sorry to hear that . And says what she always says, which is, “It’s okay. It was a long time ago.” Even though, yes, it was a long time
ago, but no, it’s not okay. Then she says what she sometimes says, because the cultural touchstone resonates with enough people:
“Before she died, my mom and I were like Gilmore Girls . It was the two of us against the world.” For a certain type of person—typically a female who was a teen or preteen in the
early 2000s—this romantic ideal is almost enough to erase the pity.
“I love Gilmore Girls ,” says Nicola, right on cue.
Usually stops there. But there’s something about Nicola’s warm, open face, her ready smile, that makes keep
talking. (Is it possible that , in high school too lonely and bewildered, in college too socially marginalized and
later too driven, too busy for real female friendships, is making a new friend ?) “I thought when I got to college I’d finally be on equal ground with everyone else, you know? Because we were all there without our parents. We were all beginning our adult lives. But it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t like that at all. I don’t think I realized how it all worked...”
Nicola is nodding slowly, chewing, nodding some more. It seems like she might actually get it, and she’s looking at
with a face so full of understanding that it almost makes want to cry. “Yeah. I totally see what you’re saying.”
They both let those sentiments lift and settle around them, and then finds herself saying, “But having acknowledged
that, I got a lot out of my education. A lot. I’m the only person from my class with a company about to go public.” She pauses,
checks herself. What is she doing? Has she completely lost her mind? She’s not supposed to talk about this with someone she’s just met. “That’s not public knowledge yet. It’s just rumors, for now. So if you don’t mind keeping that to yourself...”
“Oh, don’t worry about me,” says Nicola. “I’m not into gossip. Or fashion.” She gestures to herself; she’s wearing cutoffs
and a T-shirt that says SKIP A STRAW, SAVE A TURTLE . “Obviously.”
One visit to LookBook and Nicola could change that, if she wanted, thinks . Maybe she’ll offer Nicola a friends and
family code. She’d look amazing in a smocked maxi dress, and would bet she’s never even tried one on.
“The way I grew up,” continues Nicola, “high fashion was like if you went to Target when they put out a new bathing suit line
and you could convince your mom to get you one so you could match with your middle school friends.” (Target would have been
downright fancy for in middle school, but she doesn’t say that.) “My whole family is low-maintenance like that,” Nicola
adds. She seems to pause to consider and waits, metaphorically sitting on her hands so she doesn’t raise one out of
turn. “Except for one. My cousin David. He married into money. Like, a lot of money. He knows LookBook! In fact, he was shocked
when he heard you’re my neighbor. He lives here, on the island, in the summer. He’s the reason I have use of the cottage.
Well, his wife is.”
can feel the blood pulsing to her heart, to her cheeks. She tries not to overreact. She says, “Isn’t that funny.”
Acting like it’s no big deal. Lots of people know her company! She can’t say anything more. She’s already shared too much
about herself, more than she meant to share, even if she didn’t let Nicola get all the way to the core, where the most naked
truths lie. She hadn’t expected Nicola to be so nice, so willing to listen, so interested in All Things . She hadn’t planned to roll over, reveal her soft and tender underbelly. Usually it took much longer
than this for to trust someone.
The bill comes and they both grab for it. “No! You just had me at your party. It’s my turn.” Nicola says this sternly, midwesternly, the accent popping through again, the upward tone at the end of the sentence, the emphasis on the r in turn.
“Absolutely not,” says . “Nope. I told you at the beginning, my treat.” Almost, she comes out with the rest of it right
then and there, cuts out the middleman. But she’s already spoken to Jack; the middleman is in place; she shouldn’t muddy the
waters by changing the plan.
Deep breath, keep moving, don’t stop.
“Anyway,” she goes on. “I might need a favor from you someday.”
“From me?”
“Yes.”
Nicola squints at her and says, “I can’t imagine what I could do for you .” produces what she hopes is a Mona Lisa smile, serene and enigmatic . “But, here, give me your phone. I’ll put my number in. Text me with yours.”
does this, and when Nicola hands her back the phone she feels a childlike thrill. She had planned on this trip to
take Nicola’s measure, to see how Nicola might react when Jack Baker talks to her. But maybe in the process she’s done something
unexpected: maybe she’s made a new friend.
As they wind their way through the tables and out to the mopeds, what notices more than anything else, what she’s
really been noticing the whole time, is that Nicola moves through the world like someone who’s loved by a lot of people. It
would be easy to hate her for that. But if played by those rules, she’d have so many people to hate.
***
When Jade learned that she was the recipient of a full scholarship to Boston College, the first person she told was her guidance counselor, Ms. Morin, who had shepherded her through the college application process, and who had also found money for the application fees in a mysterious “PTO fund” that Jade suspected was actually Ms. Morin’s own bank account. She helped Jade fill out a FAFSA; she helped her set up a Naviance account to track her applications; she showed her how to do virtual tours on the websites of the colleges she couldn’t visit in person—which was all the colleges, because how was Jade supposed to get to college visits when there were days she could hardly get to high school? When Jade needed a quiet place to concentrate on her applications—and she wouldn’t find this at home, that was for sure, not at foster home number nine—she sometimes sat in Ms. Morin’s office, at a small table in the corner, listening to the tap tap tap of Ms. Morin’s hands on her own keyboard and occasionally her conversations with her husband or children about what was for dinner or whose turn it was to unload the dishwasher.
I’ll unload the dishwasher! Jade wanted to say. Take me in, I’ll unload all the dishwashers forever!
But of course you can’t say that.
One day in late November, staring at the supplemental essays required for her application to the University of Massachusetts,
Jade felt a weight on her shoulders and neck so heavy she suddenly could hardly move. Her chest felt tight; her arms were
tingling; the words on the screen in front of her began to blur. “I can’t do it,” she said.
Ms. Morin turned from her own screen, startled. “Why not?”
“It’s all impossible. I’m not meant for college.”
Ms. Morin set her lips in a tight line. “Trust me. Nobody is more meant for college than you are.”
“But there are so many steps.” Ms. Morin didn’t understand. Jade shook her head. “I mean, so I get in somewhere, right? Then
what? I can’t pay for it. I know we filled out the forms, but—it’s so much money. Those forms don’t get you all the money,
and I need all the money.”
Ms. Morin pushed her chair back from her desk and stood up so fast Jade thought she was going to knock over her computer.
“Uh-uh,” said Ms. Morin. “Nope. Absolutely not. I will not hear that from you.” Jade had heard her talk this sternly only one time before, when her children called to tell her that they’d broken a vase Ms. Morin and her husband had gotten as a wedding present. “There’s scholarship money all over this planet if you look hard enough, if you value yourself enough. Might not be to your first choice. Might be to some school you’ve never heard of. But you are valedictorian of this class, Jade Gordon, and no valedictorian in my school ” — she said this as though she personally owned the school, even though it was public and she was not even vice principal, never
mind principal—“no valedictorian in my school is going to fail to go to college. You hear me?”
I guess this is what they mean when they say tough love, thought Jade. Didn’t feel as nice as gentle love probably felt, but
given the choice between the tough kind and no love at all she’d take it.
So when she did get the money, and when it was to a school she had not only heard of but dreamed of attending, her first call was to Ms. Morin. Who was she kidding? Her
only call was to Ms. Morin. Ms. Morin screamed . Jade heard her telling whoever was in the room with her that it was okay, it was happy screaming. Then she returned to the
call with Jade and said, “You’re going to college, girlfriend. You, Jade Gordon, are going to college.”
Jade’s roommate was a randomly assigned girl from Weston, Massachusetts, named Mary Ann. Mary Ann’s parents were an ageless, lovely-smelling couple named Bob and Kathleen. They worked with the efficiency of the military to set up Mary Ann’s side of the room. Bob used a level from a tool kit he brought to affix four small, square, uniformly framed black-and-white photos of Paris to the wall. Then, while he attached a gray padded headboard to the wall (Headboard? thought Jade. She had no headboard at home, never mind an extra one to bring to college!), Kathleen made Mary Ann’s bed with crisp white sheets whose edges were piped in gray, and sent a matching gray comforter billowing over it. When the comforter had settled (with an audible sigh of satisfaction, it seemed to Jade), Kathleen folded a darker gray quilt in thirds and placed it at the foot of the bed. Next came the storage cubes that fit under the bed, the suede hangers for the standing wardrobe, the office supplies to unpack into the desk. Jade tried to make herself appear busy on her side of the room, though truth be told she had already unpacked everything she’d brought and had nothing left to do.
“Lawrence, huh?” said Bob, after grilling Jade politely. “How about that, huh? Jade’s from Lawrence!” Jade watched Kathleen
rummage through her mental file box, emerging eventually with the pronouncement that she thought she’d once “eaten a First
Communion cake from a bakery in Lawrence” and that it had been delicious. Only she didn’t say delicious , she said scrumptious , with a toss of her honey-colored bob, and Jade thought she saw Mary Ann gently cringe.
“Great area,” Bob said affably. “Lawrence.” Jade said, “Sure,” although it really wasn’t, in places it was terrible, and Bob
added, “Shame they can’t do more with those old mill buildings.” Jade agreed that yes, it was a shame, not realizing then
that this genial, agreeable, ultimately false costume she had slipped on for Bob and Kathleen was one that she’d wear for the next four years, and for a long time after
that.
Kathleen and Mary Ann had moved on to the dresser, carefully arranging underwear and socks in small white boxes that somehow
fit the drawers exactly. How had they known to acquire these?
“I don’t know what I would have done if you’d chosen Chapel Hill,” said Kathleen. “If we had to say goodbye to you and then
get on a plane...” Her voice trailed off. Bob squeezed Kathleen’s shoulder, as though to shield her from even the thought
of a multistate distance between her and her daughter.
The goodbye between daughter and parents, though Mary Ann’s house in Weston was only nineteen minutes away, less as the crow flies, was tearful and punctuated by long silent hugs that seemed to have no end in sight. Jade tried to bury herself behind the open door of her own wardrobe, but this was a fruitless endeavor because the door didn’t reach all the way to the floor and certainly her feet were visible. After the hugs came admonitions to call or text if Mary Ann had forgotten anything, anything at all , and while Jade was marveling over what it must be like to be loved like this, so thoroughly and unconditionally, so, well,
so publicly , Bob and Kathleen slipped out the door.
At this point Mary Ann, wiping unashamedly at her tear-dampened eyes, turned to Jade and said, “Where’s all your stuff ? Is someone else bringing it?”
They got along well enough, Jade and Mary Ann. It didn’t take long for Mary Ann to unleash her inner party girl, and it took
about the same amount of time for Jade to unleash her inner ghost, floating through the dorm, mostly invisible. Soon Mary
Ann’s attachment to her mother fell somewhat by the wayside, though the same could probably not be said in reverse. After
a time, if Mary Ann’s phone happened to be face up on her bed, Jade could see a call from Kathleen go ignored, and then two
more calls after that, and then a text. The text usually said something like JUST CALLING TO CHECK IN! followed by several cheery emojis. (Emojis were new then, and Kathleen made copious use of them.) Jade couldn’t imagine anyone
in her life trying to get in touch with her with such vigor and regularity. She couldn’t imagine anyone “just checking in.”
Jade and Mary Ann were respectful of one another’s space. Both tended to do laundry in the hangover quiet of a Sunday afternoon,
and sometimes they’d fold together in companionable silence, playing Gilmore Girls in the background on Mary Ann’s laptop. Both girls could sleep through mostly anything, Jade because she’d been reared in chaos, the ignoring of which was necessary for survival, and Mary Ann because she had both a state-of-the-art noise machine that played soothing waterfall sounds and an expensive pair of noise-canceling headphones that she used when her family traveled to Europe because “overnight flights were brutal.”
Not that there was much noise to block from Jade’s side of the room. From the first day of matriculation, when the first-year
class gathered at the First Night Festival on Stokes Lawns, to graduation in Alumni Stadium, Jade mostly put her head down
and she worked. And she worked. And she worked.
It was her shameful, dark secret, that she didn’t come from a place of love. Maybe she wasn’t the only one on the campus who
had that secret—but she felt like she was.
At Boston College, Jade studied. Her classmates also studied, but they did other things too. They went to shop on Newbury
Street or eat in the North End; they went to a Red Sox game, a Bruins game, a nightclub called Venu. Winter break or spring
break rolled around, and off they went, sometimes on trips with their parents (Aspen, St. Barts) or with each other (Cancún,
Punta Cana, Miami). They returned tastefully tanned, complaining of lack of sleep and airport delays and the papers they had
yet to write for the next day’s class.
Lawrence was forty-two miles from campus; fifty-two minutes in average traffic. But it may as well have been another country,
because here people spoke an entirely different language. Ski houses. Prep school. Parents who were “helicoptering.”
And yet the same students called upon these very same helicoptering parents when the slightest bump appeared in the road:
a professor who had graded them unfairly, a credit card that wouldn’t work, a simple appointment that needed scheduling.
A partial list of things Mary Ann called her parents about that first year:
A broken clasp on her favorite gold bracelet (her mother swung by after work one Wednesday evening to pick up the bracelet;
she delivered it, clasp repaired, the following Monday).
Help composing an email to her writing seminar professor to challenge a poor grade on the first paper of the semester.
Help replacing her iPhone 4, which she had dropped on the way back to the dorms after a night out.
An appointment at a day spa on Newbury Street when her “skin was so dried out she couldn’t stand it.” (There she was the following
afternoon, arranging a ride downtown from a sophomore with a car, returning with a damp sheen to her skin, needing a nap because
“treatments were exhausting when they were intense.”)
Advice on what courses to choose for the second semester.
More shampoo, which came from a specific hair salon near her home, and which appeared, as if by magic, outside the dorm room
thirty-six hours after the request went out.
It went on from there. And on, and on, and on.
One day that freshman fall semester, Jade returned from the library to find Mary Ann lying on her own bed and, on Jade’s bed,
a girl from down the hall. Jade didn’t know this girl’s name but she saw her sometimes in the bathroom, brushing her long,
wavy hair, or standing as close as she could get to the bathroom mirror, considering herself with a stern, unsparing look.
Once she had said out loud, “God, I wish my nose wasn’t so pointy.”
Jade looked around to see who this girl might be addressing; it turned out it was nobody, or it was Jade.
“Your nose isn’t pointy,” Jade said after a time, because it seemed like this was what she was supposed to do. “Ohmygod, really?” Jade nodded. “Ohmygod, you’re the best. Thank you.”
“This is Shelly,” Mary Ann told Jade, in the dorm room, and Jade said, “Hi,” and Shelly said, “I’m totally lying on your bed,” and smiled but made no move to rectify the situation.
“That’s okay,” said Jade. “I was just picking something up.” (Not true.)
“No, stay!” said Shelly. She sat up, swung her legs to the floor, and patted the spot next to her, to indicate that Jade should
feel welcome to sit down on her own bed.
Shelly’s phone rang at that point and she glanced at it and said, “Oh boy. Mama Salazar’s on the prowl.”
“Answer it!” said Mary Ann, laughing. “Put her on speaker!”
Shelly laughed too and explained to Jade, “My mom’s prone to day drinking and dialing.” She shrugged, and pressed the ignore call button, while Jade gathered two books and a notebook she didn’t need and slunk out of the room. Make yourself invisible,
Jade. Ask nothing of anyone.